Really, an across-the-board PE requirement wouldn't be a bad thing. I'll go so far as to say it's a requirement every semester you attend--including the summer sessions. I know, not everyone's into team sports or aerobics. Offer a full slate. Offer self-designed independent study. Just set standards for it and hold the students accountable. Play a varsity sport, and you want to count your off-season conditioning? Fine, but your attendance has to be documented. We used to play rollerblade tag on the quad most evenings. Document the nights and the locations--provide a means to be checked up on. I played pickup hockey with friends, I can count that too, just have the rink staff sign when I arrive and leave. Whatever you do, don't cut people slack. Don't let them stand around. If they can't run, they walk--but they do it longer, so it's actually worth something.

"I didn't come to Lincoln to be told that my weight is not in an acceptable range." You probably didn't come to Lincoln for a lot of things. That's nice you're a three-time honor student. Your body mass isn't "slightly high". It ain't healthy. You knew the policy when you came in. You chose to stay at your private university. Lay off the Cheetos and get your ass in the pool.

At some Ivy League schools you have to pass a swim test to graduate. The purpose of school is to teach you how to survive the real world, learning how to at least use a treadmill properly is one of them. I applaud this school and wish more of them did it.

Indeed. MIT also has the swim test. I ran across a Boston Globe article a while back about it, and another one in the LA Times. The Times calls it "Notre Dame, MIT, Cornell, Columbia, Hamilton, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, and Washington and Lee, plus the service academies." Harvard, Colgate, and UNC all dropped it in the last few years.

The real shocker I heard is that prior to WWII, the Navy didn't require its sailors to know how to swim. Men died in Pearl Harbor simply because they could not swim away from their ships sinking in the harbor.